3.1.6: Sir Francis Galton
- Page ID
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Sir Francis Galton was an English biologist, anthropologist, explorer, applied mathematician, and the cousin to Charles Darwin, who began making fingerprint observations in the 1880’s. In his book Fingerprints, published in 1892, he supported Sir William Herschel’s claims that fingerprints are never duplicated and that they remain unchanged during an individual’s lifetime. Most importantly, Sir Francis noticed something that made fingerprint comparison a scientific methodology: minutiae. Fingerprint patterns, which were established as loops whorls, and arches, were already defined. What Sir Francis gave us was a method of classification inside of the patterns that are based on natural formations of the ridges. These formations are bifurcations, end ridges, short ridges, enclosures, spurs, bridges, and dots. The position of these formations within the pattern are what make the finger marks unique and individual. We will explore these minutiae in a subsequent chapter. The discovery of this minutiae was so important to the science of fingerprint comparison that we named the minutiae “Galton’s detail.” Also, in recognition of the importance of this discovery, in 1915, the official logo of the International Association for Identification adopted the print of the right fore finger of Sir Francis as their official logo.